Tiella Barese Recipe Paired with Pugliese Wine

Tiella Barese, rice, potatoes and mussels paired with Negroamaro wine: Flavors of Puglia

Anyone who has been to Bari and hasn't tried the "Tiella Barese" can be said to have never truly been there!
Many call it the Italian Paella, but its flavor is decidedly different, as is the preparation – one of the few things they have in common is the use of rice and mussels.
The ingredients are sourced from the Bari area and the name derives from "tieèd", which in the Barese dialect means pan.
The secret of this dish lies in positioning the ingredients so that the rice absorbs flavor from each of them, and in keeping a close eye on the cooking.
Ingredients:

• 200 gr. of yellow rice or risotto rice rinsed under running water
• 3 tablespoons of grated Rodez cheese (or pecorino romano)
• 1 tablespoon of parmigiano reggiano
• salt
• extra virgin olive oil
• 6-7 cherry tomatoes cut in half
• ½ clove of garlic
• 1 white onion, sliced
• 1 zucchini cut into rounds
• 6-7 potatoes cut into rounds
• 600 gr. of mussels
• chopped parsley
• black pepper to taste

For cooking, I recommend terracotta pans – if you have small ones, you could cook individual portions separately and serve them just like that!

Preparation

Clean the mussels and let them open by placing them in a pot (without water) and cooking them until you've achieved your goal.
Filter the cooking liquid and set it aside.
Finely chop the garlic and parsley and keep the sliced onion separate.
Divide the ingredients to create four layers, repeated three times:

1. potatoes
2. rice
3. mussels
4. onion/garlic/tomatoes/cheese/chopped garlic and parsley/zucchini/pepper
5. then start again with the potatoes

Begin by layering the potatoes, then the rice, then the mussels, followed by onion, garlic, tomatoes, cheese, chopped garlic, parsley, pieces of zucchini, pepper, a few spoonfuls of the previously filtered cooking liquid, and a drizzle of oil.
Repeat the layering three times and finish with a final layer of potatoes, on which I recommend being more generous with the cheese and oil so they brown nicely.
Remember: be restrained with the salt (given the use of the mussel cooking water) but don't skimp on the oil (this is a Pugliese dish, after all!).
Bake by covering the dish with aluminum foil; during cooking checks, if you feel it necessary, add a little of the mussel liquid, keeping in mind that the dish should still have a consistency that is "not brothy".

After the mouth-watering read of this recipe, it seems only right to recommend a good wine!
We could pair it with a Fiano Minutolo by Albano Carrisi, or with the excellent Guado San Leo, both from Puglia.

For this dish I chose Eloquenzia as my pairing, a Copertino Dop Rosso produced by Severino Garofano, whose rosé wine Girofle we have already covered.
This is a wine made from Negroamaro alone; a grape variety that fully embodies the Pugliese tradition.
The name Negroamaro derives from the repetition of the word "black" in two languages: niger in Latin and maru in ancient Greek; others trace the name to the local dialect "niuru maru", referring to the dark color of the skins and the bitter flavor of the wine.
Severino Garofano is considered one of the gurus of Negroamaro: remarkably, 5 out of 7 of his wines are produced from grapes of this variety – 5 out of 6 if only the reds are counted!
Eloquenzia presents itself elegantly with its proud intense ruby red color with an orange rim typical of the native grape variety; on the nose, spices alternate with hints of red fruits such as cherry and raspberry; on the palate it is soft and fresh with a pleasant acidity and a clean finish.

I chose this wine because at the moment of selection I wanted to pair something that would highlight the native region of the dish – and what wine can reflect Puglia better than Negroamaro? Indeed, the Italian band "Negramaro" adopted it as their name in order to reclaim the pride of their Pugliese origins, further contributing to the promotion of the grape variety!
Remarkably, wine based on Negroamaro grapes ranks third among DOC wines with the highest sales growth rate in large-scale retail, according to a survey conducted for Vinitaly in 2008.